Electronic office systems are increasingly providing for electronic document processing over a network of connected and differently located office systems. These networks of connected office systems consist of interconnected pieces of equipment and programs used for moving information between points where it may be generated, processed, stored and used. Documents stored within these electronic office systems must frequently be shared by many users or a collection of related users representing an enterprise. An enterprise as used in this invention comprises any economic organization. An enterprise may be a conglomerate, a company, a division within a company, a set of departments within a company, or a single department within a company. Shared documents are frequently stored in document libraries where they are accessible by members of an enterprise or other users. The ability to file a document in a library allows the filed document to be retrieved by issuing a SEARCH command. One prior art method for handling the exchange of documents in the library to an enterprise or user is the Document Interchange Architecture (DIA).
DIA is a program-to-program communication architecture which defines the protocols and data structures that enable programs to interchange information such as documents and messages in a consistent and predictable manner. DIA is independent of the type of information that is stored in a library and provides a defined set of parameters that describes the contents of information being transmitted, such as the name under which the information is filed, the authors, the subject of the information, the date the information was filed, keywords, etc. These descriptors enable a document to be searched in the library by an enterprise or end user.
However, the current implementation of DIA does not allow an enterprise or end user to add unique descriptors beyond a defined set of DIA descriptors. As a result, an enterprise such as a bank, is limited to searching for documents stored in the library by author, subject matter, date file, etc. The enterprise cannot use search terms that express syntax and semantics defined by the enterprise. For example, a banking enterprise cannot issue searches using search terms with the semantics of "Bank Account ID" or Loan Identifier". Likewise, a manufacturing enterprise with access to documents stored in the library, cannot issue searches using search terms with the semantics of "parts" or "inventory".
Consequently, what is needed is a technique to allow an enterprise to define the syntax and semantics of search terms that are specific to that enterprise.